Czesław Niemen

Czesław Niemen
Czesław Niemen (Celebrity Alley, Kielce)
Background information
Birth name	Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki
Born	(1939-02-16)February 16, 1939 in Stare Wasiliszki, Nowogródek Voivodeship, Poland (now Belarus)
Died	January 17, 2004(2004-01-17) (aged 64) in Warsaw, Poland
Genres	Rock & roll, psychedelic rock, progressive rock, folk music, avant-garde jazz, electronic music
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, poet
Instruments	Multi-instrumentalist (mostly electronic instruments and keyboards)
Years active	1967–2001
Associated acts	Niebiesko-Czarni, Andrzej Kurylewicz
Website	Niemen at polishmusic.ca

Czesław Niemen (Polish pronunciation: [t͡ʂɛswaf ɲemɛn]; February 16, 1939 – January 17, 2004), born Czesław Juliusz Wydrzycki, and often credited as just Niemen, was one of the most important and original Polish singer-songwriters and rock balladeers of the last quarter-century, singing mainly in Polish.

Niemen was born in Stare Wasiliszki in the Nowogródek Voivodeship of the Second Polish Republic (now in the Grodno Region of Belarus). Czesław Niemen belonged to a community of Poles, living outside the eastern borders of contemporary Poland, on the eastern lands of the historical Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (called 'Kresy' - 'borderlands' - in Polish).

In the dawn of World War II these ethnic Belarusian lands were annexed by the Soviet Union and became a part of Belorussian SSR, according to Europe's post-war reorganization performed during the Yalta Conference at the same time when Gdańsk and Wrocław (called Danzig and Breslau in German) became a part of Poland. In the 1950s Niemen was allowed to move to Poland as one of many Poles embodied by the so-called Second Repatriation.

He made his debut in the early 1960s, singing Polish rock and soul music. He possessed an unusually wide voice range and equally rich intonation. He was also an ardent composer and a keyboard player.